Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Bat Convention: Staver and Reisman - What could possibly go wrong?

As expected these two produce a mountain of batshit.

Liberty Counsel has filed an amicus brief on behalf of Judith Reisman in the transgender student case before the Supreme Court, Gloucester County School Board v. G.G.. Mat Staver heads up the anti-LGBT hate group Liberty Counsel.

Before I get to the brief, about Dr. Reisman:

Reisman's claim to fame is that she was a consultant to the U.S. Department of Justice. The reality is that in the 1980s she was able to obtain a grant to study the effects of Playboy and Hustler and if they were linked to juvenile violence. The report that she ultimately produced was so full of errors and represented so much unscientific methodology that the American University (which provided the academic base for the study) refused to publish it. Reisman does have a PhD — in communications and was never qualified in the first place.

Taxpayers had the pleasure of paying nearly $800 thousand for junk that wouldn't pass rigor for a junior high science project.
By the early 1990s Reisman had become a right wing celebrity. At about that time Reisman claimed that gay men employed recruitment methods that “rival those of the United States Marine Corps.” She told a group of Christian leaders that homosexual “recruitment is loud; it is clear; it is everywhere.” She estimated the homosexual population at the time to be 1-2%, but she predicted at least 20% to 30% of the nation's youth would become gay due to the recruitment. That doesn't seem to have occurred.

Reisman's “advocacy” started with the condemnation of the legacy of Alfred Kinsey. It probably stems from the fact that her daughter was molested and died 15 years later from a brain aneurysm which Reisman linked to the molestation. Eventually the tail was wagging the dog and she passed herself off as an expert in sexuality absent any real credentials to do so.

It is really so much easier to become a celebrity in the incurious Christian right wing world. Imagine the money that I could make: Jew converts to Christianity and is saved from the depravity of homosexuality. I could come up with some imaginative confessions about my sex life. I just have to sell my soul and make the claim. Just imagine Tony Perkins kissing my ass.

The Court should reject the departments' [DOJ and ED] directive because there is no scientific evidence for the concept of a differential “gender identity.

The idea that gender identity is not supported by scientific evidence would come as a shock to the many psychologists and psychiatrists who have studied this phenomenon for for decades. Reisman is discounting observations as evidence. Anecdotal evidence (largely dependent upon the testimony of individuals) is appreciated with skepticism for sure. However, anecdotal evidence can be empirical and even verifiable. Medical case studies, for example, rely heavily on anecdotal evidence.

The Court should give no effect to the departments' interpretation because it replaces scientific reality with an artificial social construct built upon child sexual abuse, fraud and human experimentation.

Gender identity is a scientific reality. There exists evidence that gender identity is biological. There is evidence of a neurological distinction between gender and biological sex. There is no evidence that gender identity is a merely a social construct (evidence would essentially have to impossibly prove a negative). There is no evidence that gender identity has anything to do with sexual abuse, intellectual fraud (something that Reisman has an intimate relationship with) or human experimentation. Reisman trots out her unsupported anti-Kinsey material in support of her claim.

The Court should give no effect to the departments' interpretation because it is inimical to the health and welfare of children and antithetical to the departments' goal of providing a safe educational environment for all.

If someone ignorantly claims that gender identity doesn't exist then they are going to claim that recognizing gender identity is harmful. However the evidence of harm is predicated upon the nonexistent evidence that gender identity is merely a social construct so it falls under its own weight in bullshit. Safety for all means safety for gender nonconforming children as well. Reisman goes on to claim that the recognition of gender identity is harmful to the emotion and mental health of children. I defy her to prove that canard.

There is much more to this, of course. You are free to expose and endanger innocent brain cells through the provided link.